Three Lenten Resources

Editor’s Note: DC Service Corps volunteer Emily Putzke shares three resources (music, art, and a poem) to help us journey through Lent. 

---

Dear friends,

As we journey through the season of Lent, I’d like to share three resources to help us enter into a hushed and contemplative space. 

1. Lenten Musical Meditation by Joel Clarkson 

“As you listen to the piece, I hope that in our own time of uncertainty and fear, you will attune your ears to the tensions in the harmony, and experience within them the ringing truth that in our struggles, we are not alone, but that we are accompanied, by the one who has entered into our suffering, and who, with the whole host of Heaven, and all who have gone before us, fights on our behalf.” – Joel Clarkson

English:

We fly to Thy protection,

O Holy Mother of God;

Do not despise our petitions

in our necessities,

but deliver us always

from all dangers,

O Glorious and Blessed Virgin. Amen.

 

 

2. Maundy Thursday by Malcom Guite

Here is the source of every sacrament,

The all-transforming presence of the Lord,

Replenishing our every element

Remaking us in his creative Word.

For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,

The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech,

The fire dances where the candles shine,

The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.

And here He shows the full extent of love

To us whose love is always incomplete,

In vain we search the heavens high above,

The God of love is kneeling at our feet.

Though we betray Him, though it is the night.

He meets us here and loves us into light.

-Malcom Guite

 

3. Compassion by William Adolphe Bouguereau

“The man with his head on Jesus’ chest is a representation of every man and mankind as a whole. The man in the painting shows the same empathy and bearing his own symbolic cross, has found his way to Jesus and his own redemption … Bouguereau chooses to depict the savior on a barren wasteland, symbolic of the man’s spiritual life before finding his way to Christ.” – Kara Lysandra Ross, Art Renewal Center

What music, words, and art are accompanying you on your Lenten journey?